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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825752">he loves this (to live, for once)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/privateerwrites/pseuds/privateerwrites'>privateerwrites</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>nager (to swim) [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Musketeers (2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coaches, Fluff, M/M, Modern AU, Sleepy Cuddles, Trevilieu, basically it's just, not me writing trevilieu fluff before I get the plot down, swimming au!!, yes there willbe more of this at somepoint</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:27:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,190</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825752</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/privateerwrites/pseuds/privateerwrites</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the first day of the summer swim club season, and Treville and Richelieu get to enjoy doing the job the love with the person they love.</p><p>swimming and diving au with Treville and Richelieu as coaches</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu/de Tréville (Trois Mousquetaires)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>nager (to swim) [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124960</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>he loves this (to live, for once)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So uh,,, yes there's a main fic for this but also no I don't have more than about half a chapter written.</p><p>Please leave kudos and comment if you enjoyed!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Armand knows, logically, that Jean wouldn't really mind doing his own paperwork. He also knows that Jean would happily fill out the registration forms for him. The thing is, knowing that Jean doesn't have to do his least favorite part of the job first thing in the morning is intoxicating, even as his head is kind of killing him. Midnight comes fast when one is filling out repetitive paperwork.<br/>
<br/>
Jean shows up in the doorway to Richelieu's office at about midnight-thirty and smiles fondly.<br/>
<br/>
"Come to bed, Armand," is all he says, and that's all the convincing Richelieu needs to turn off the lights and slip under the covers next to his husband.<br/>
<br/>
When he wakes up the next morning, he glances over and sees that Jean is still asleep, and he lies there for a moment, appreciating how lovely it is to be able to do this. Eventually, he gets up and starts making Jean's favorite quiche- a bacon and spinach affair that also involves broccoli and cheese. As he is putting the quiche in the oven, he is hit with the realization that today is the first day of the summer club season, and he and Jean have to be at the pool at 12:00 for meetings with their respective assistant coaches.<br/>
<br/>
He's making the quiche in muffin tins, because it amuses Jean when he does so. Armand wanders his way back into the bedroom after putting the tins in the oven, appreciating the calm on his lover's face while he sleeps for a moment, before gently pressing a kiss to the top of his head.<br/>
<br/>
"Jean," he murmurs, shaking Treville's shoulder. His husband startles awake and throws one arm out across the sheets, and Armand reaches out and holds his hand.<br/>
<br/>
"Good morning, love," he says gently. Jean turns his head and smiles at him, and for a moment, the whole world is just the two of them.<br/>
<br/>
"Good morning," Treville mumbles, leaning over to give Armand a kiss.<br/>
<br/>
"I made quiche," Richelieu declares after they part. "In the little tiny pans."<br/>
<br/>
"I love you," Jean says, throwing the covers off of his legs and standing up out of bed. (Armand will never get sick of hearing that statement, said aloud in the light after so many years of hiding it in the dark.)<br/>
<br/>
They do get to sit down and have breakfast together, which Armand wasn't totally sure would happen, due to how late they had both woken up, and the time they needed to get to the pool.<br/>
<br/>
When he pulls on his coaching jacket for the first time in over two months, a little piece of his heart, the piece that fell in love with diving and coaching all those years ago, settles down. (He would never admit it, but watching Treville pulling on his own coaching gear like it's armor is one of his favorite things in the world. It takes an awful lot of restraint not to drag Jean into a kiss, but in the end he doesn't, and just settles for holding his beloved's hand.)<br/>
<br/>
Jean drives because Armand is reordering the paperwork in the passenger seat, and by the time he has managed to organize them in a manner that he finds pleasing, Jean has stopped the car and parked in one of the spots specially reserved for the summer coaches. He's looking at Armand with a soft gaze, and Armand meets his eyes and smiles a little.<br/>
<br/>
"Shall we," he asks, turning to get out of the car. Treville's smile lights up his whole face. Armand takes Treville's arm when it's offered to him, and they walk in to the reception area like that, arm in arm.<br/>
<br/>
They part ways when they get there, Treville leaving to meet with his assistant coaches and Richelieu heading off to drop off paperwork and make form packets. He also has to meet with his coaches, but they won't arrive for another hour- unlike Treville, he has confidence that a run down of their goals and the facilities won't take more than about thirty minutes.<br/>
<br/>
He gets to enjoy the small workspace that's been set up for him in the club office, and manages to knock out a written list of the points he wants to cover specifically with his new divers.<br/>
<br/>
By the time Anne shows up, he has just finished making her a copy of the attendance list and placing it on a clipboard for her.<br/>
<br/>
"Good morning," she murmurs, and curtseys. It's an in-joke from her round of divers, and it never ceases to make Richelieu smile a little.<br/>
<br/>
"Good morning," he says, and sweeps out from behind his desk, taking advantage of the fact that the flap covering the mesh backing of his jacket is currently detached. It swirls around his shoulders just a little. God, he missed wearing this jacket.<br/>
<br/>
They walk into the pool room together, heads bent towards each other, discussing facilities and divers and skills and boards and suits. The warmth and smell envelop Richelieu, and he takes a deep breath in. Anne does the same.<br/>
<br/>
A quick survey of the diving area reveals that it's large and has everything Richelieu would want in the short term, and he smiles to himself. Jean picked well. (Of course he did, a little voice in Richelieu's head says. Of course he did.)<br/>
<br/>
Jussac is waiting by the 1m springboard for them, and when Richelieu arrives, he sweeps his baseball cap off of his head and bows, his hands resting on top of each other on the outside of his duffle bag, almost as if it were a sword at his side. At just a year and a half younger than Anne, he's part of the group that's in on that particular joke. He inclines his head towards Anne in greeting after standing fully, and she tips hers back.<br/>
<br/>
Richelieu has missed this.<br/>
<br/>
He leaves the two of them to chat for a minute, moving around a couple of chairs and making sure that his emergency bag is situated where he would like it. Treville had carried it in for him and set it down where he thought would be best, as he would be in the pool area first, and while it's been placed in the same spot Armand would have chosen, double-checking its position doesn't hurt.<br/>
<br/>
The three of them regroup into a mildly imposing formation just to the left of the locker room exits as the children start filing in- Richelieu in front, Anne to his right, Jussac to his left. All three are holding clipboards, though each serves a different purpose. Treville's older, more experienced swimmers, peel off towards where their coach is standing with a "Good Afternoon, Coach," pointed in Richelieu's direction. The younger ones look around in confusion, not sure as to which of the two sets of bleachers they're meant to be using. Jussac gently points them in the direction of the set that they're all gathering on, and as the flow slows to a trickle, only a couple coming in at a time, the diving coaches head towards where everyone is sitting.<br/>
<br/>
Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and Treville are already lined up in front of the kids. Anne, Jussac, and Richelieu join them.<br/>
<br/>
Aramis is attempting to get the children into some sort of order, though it doesn't seem to be going well. Athos is scowling a little, and Richelieu understands. The noise is a bit much. Porthos is talking to Treville quietly, and after a moment they nod in agreement and move a small distance away from each other.<br/>
<br/>
"Settle down," Treville booms as the clock hits one thirty, and the bleachers fall silent almost immediately.<br/>
<br/>
"Welcome! I assume you're all here to swim, not just listen to me talk, so I will try to keep this short," he says, and quickly runs through a list of rules and expectations. Jussac passes out the papers sitting on his clipboard as Treville talks, and soon every kid in the bleachers has a schedule and a small 'get-to-know-you' questionnaire that they need to fill out and return in the next week or so. The divers are let go from Treville's speech when it turns more towards swimming, and they follow the coaches over to the diving well.<br/>
<br/>
Richelieu takes a deep breath, smiles paternally, and begins to cover everything that he must before he can get these children in the water. He gets to finish by introducing Anne and Jussac, and this is his favorite moment.<br/>
<br/>
"These are your assistant coaches. You will address them as Coach Milady-," here Anne waves, "-and Coach Jussac.” He pauses to allow Jussac to gesture to himself before continuing on.</p><p>“They are former divers of mine, and you would do well to listen to them. Now, I think that's enough talking for today. Let's have everyone get in and swim a 300 equivalent, and then we will separate into groups."<br/>
<br/>
He already sees some divers he knows, both from the regular club season and from past summers, which gives him more hope than he had when originally surveying the group. There are more young children than he had anticipated, and for a moment he feels a little guilty for relegating them all to Anne. Then he pauses and considers that giving them to Jussac would be a disaster and that he would much rather be coaching the older divers, and the remorse disappears.<br/>
<br/>
He watches them swim, and for a moment, this is the day he fell in love with coaching. Then he is snapped back into the present by his aching knee, and he takes a seat to watch them finish their warm-ups.<br/>
<br/>
By the time practice is over, he is rather confident in the ability of his older divers, and also incredibly glad he did not have to teach the younger children. Anne and Jussac stay back to practice some dives. Richelieu wanders over to where Treville is watching his assistant coaches hang out with an older kid Richelieu doesn't recognize.<br/>
<br/>
The two of them stand there for a while, just enjoying each other's company. After about a half an hour, Treville calls his Inseparables out of the pool, and Richelieu lets Anne and Jussac know he's leaving. They bow to him from the base of the springboard, and he nods in response.<br/>
<br/>
Richelieu and Treville head outside together, and when they get to the car, they sit in silence for a while, the warmth of the car and the afternoon summer sun creating a sense of beauty and peace. Armand reaches over and holds Jean's hand, and they drive home.<br/>
<br/>
They get takeout for dinner because they're both too tired to cook. Jean answers a couple of texts, and they sit down together at the table. It turns out that Jean has a new senior. Technically, the kid is a rising freshman in college, but he's swimming with them over the summer because he's just moved here. He'll be attending the same university as Jean's Inseparables, and the schedule for the swim club lined up perfectly with the training for his college team. Jean says that Athos has taken a bit of a shine to him, though only in the way that Athos does, which is to say that he finds d'Artagnan irritating but promising.<br/>
<br/>
Armand, in turn, talks about his rising seniors, and how much both Anne and Jussac have grown as athletes since the last time he saw them. Jean is giving him a fond smile across the table, and he reaches out and grabs his husband's hand. Jean squeezes it, just a little, and Armand lets a little more of his walls from the day fall down. He is home now, and he is loved and known and safe.<br/>
<br/>
Their coaching jackets hang on the wall next to each other, red and blue and black. Their bags sit by the door, their shoes lined up in the shoe rack. Armand forgets, sometimes, what it was like before all this, and he finds that he cannot wait for the day when this has been so much of his life that while he remembers what came before, it is but a shadow in his mind instead of a cloud.<br/>
<br/>
(Not those nights in the dark, not those nights in the back alleyways, not those nights in the hospitals or those nights waiting up forever and never getting anything back- no, not those.)<br/>
<br/>
The day Jean called him his forever, the day they moved in together, the day he first realized he was in love, the day that he and Jean were married. Those first.<br/>
<br/>
He must have said some of this out loud, because Jean is looking at him like he hung the stars in the sky. Jean kisses his hand.<br/>
<br/>
"I'd like that too," he says. "I'd like that too."</p><p>Richelieu has made many promises of allegiance over the years, but this one is by far his favorite. He has promised his death so many times. He is glad that this one is the time he has promised his life.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If Tumblr is more your thing, I'm also over there at privateerstudies!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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